New reading for 2023

New Reading for 2023

Heading into January 2023, I invested in some eclectic paperbacks. Some fantasy, some sci-fi, some horror, and ('The Movement'), Youth Behaving Badly.These should see me through the upcoming Winter, if nothing else.

X-Men: God Loves Man Kills

X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills
Marvel Graphic Novel No. 5, 1982

'X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills' was written by Chris Claremont and illustrated by Brent Eric Anderson, with letters by Tom Orzechowski, colors by Steve Oliff, and edited by Louise Jones.

This was one of the inaugural Marvel Graphic Novels, which were designed to take advantage of the 'Direct Market' model of distribution and sales brought about by the growth of dedicated comic book stores across America. 

By 1982 the X-Men franchise was one of the most popular and profitable in comics and it was not at all unusual that Marvel would elect to issue a graphic novel about the superhero team. 

The lead writer for the X-Men, the UK-born Chris Claremont, had begun working at Marvel in 1969, and by 1982 had specialized in producing overwrought story lines which relentlessly, and unimaginatively, hammered home the concept that the struggles of mutants against bigotry and hate were stand-ins for the civil rights struggles taking place in America.

In ''God Loves, Man Kills', the X-Men confront the Reverend William Stryker, a fanatical Christian preacher who nurses an abiding loathing for mutantkind. Stryker has sent covert 'Purifier' teams to hunt down and either kill or abduct mutants, and also is lobbying the government to classify mutants as a danger to the welfare of the citizenry.

Across the 96 pages of the graphic novel, the X-Men battle the Purifiers, and Charles Xavier's pacifism in the face of Stryker's persecution sorely is tested. Magento allies himself with the X-Men, a development that is crucial to the team's chances of defeating Stryker's unholy crusade.

At the time it came out, 'God Loves, Man Kills' garnered a great deal of praise, with some reviewers at amazon claiming that reading the book back then, and now, brings to them deep emotion, even tears.

However, for me, 'God Loves, Man Kills' comes across as badly overwritten, with Anderson's art struggling to have an effect, burdened as it is by too many speech balloons. As for Claremont's script, it is so sententious and moralizing that it soon veers, and stays, into a kind of unintentional self-parody.

The only engaging segment of 'God Loves, Man Kills' is when the action moves to the ghetto, and some black and Puerto Rican gang-bangers (!) who decide to involve themselves in a faceoff between Kitty Pryde and the Purifiers. Alas, this segment, however promising, ends all too soon. It's something that, if even in a faint way, approaches the admirably irreverent stance the writers at 2000 AD and Judge Dredd brought to the 'mutant' theme.  

Following release of the 1982 edition, Marvel subsequently published the 'God Loves, Man KIlls' graphic novel in other softcover and hardcover printings, including an 'extended' version in which Claremont and Anderson provide additional pages.

Summing up, to me, 'God Loves, Man Kills' is an exemplar of the orotund, self-indulgent writing that characterized so much of Marvel's output during the 1980s and 1990s. 

If only U.S. readers had had greater access to material from the UK and 2000 AD, then there would have been the chance for them to see that there was more to be had from comics than the gaseous virtue signalling of the X-Men franchise.  

 50% Off at PM Press

As the year comes to a close, PM Press of Oakland is having a 50% off sale on much of its catalog. Use the coupon code GIFT at checkout. The offer expires on January 1, 2023, so don't dawdle.

If you haven't yet gotten any of the volumes pictured above, authored by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre, that deal with various genres of paperback books, then now is a good time to obtain them. 

PM also has a sizeable catalog of books in its 'Outspoken Authors' imprint, which is devoted to publishing ephemera from science fiction, horror, and crime novelists like Ursula Le Guin, Joe R. Lansdale, John Shirley, Elizabeth Hand, Michael Moorcock, and John Crowley, among others. Most hip, indeed............

Playboy December 1984

Playboy

December 1984

Let's go back in time 38 years, and celebrate December, 1984, along with Playboy magazine.

This is a prosperous time for the magazine; the December issue has a whopping 308 pages, crammed with ads for liquor, tobacco products, consumer electronics, clothing, and fitness gear. Anyone remember Jantzen sportwear....?!

Then there is something called the 'Aroma Disc' player - ?! Labeled a 'fragrance record diffuser', a kind of a cross between a Renuzit and a CD player, it sold very well when introduced in December 1983. 

You can find vintage units for sale at eBay.

As far as celebrity nudie action, the December 1984 issue featured Suzanne Somers, born in 1946 as Suzanna Mahoney. Somers was looking to raise her profile, having departed the hit TV series Three's Company in 1981. Somers plays it coy with the pictorial, keeping the action at an R-rated level, ostensibly because she had a 18 year-old son (who, according to the Wiki entry, saw the photos anyway).

Elsewhere in the December issue we get some additional 'celebrity skin' in the form of a 'Sex Stars of 1984' review:

There are the usual cartoons and, in 1984, the magazine had a section devoted to comic strips.

The fiction features in the magazine are high-powered, and include an excerpt from the 1984 novel by Mario Puzo, 'The Sicilian', which was set in the universe of the highly successful 'Godfather' franchise.

For nonfiction, we have another installment in the serialized version of the 1987 book by Michael Drosnin, 'Citizen Hughes', about the eccentric millionaire Howard Hughes. Don Ivan Punchatz provides a great illustration:

There's an advertising / marketing section devoted to the magic of - robots ! Yes, in '84, robots were available, to do simple things. The Roomba was still 17 years in the future (the first robot vacuum was the Swedish-made Trilobite, in 2001). But in '84 you could spend quite a bit of money on a robot that transported your drinks.

That's how it was, at the tail of end of 1984. Who knew what 1985 would bring.........?

The Daily Dredds for 2023

The Daily Dredds Volumes One and Two

2000 AD, 2014

I so liked the Judge Dredd daily comic strips that are compiled in a trade paperback, 'The Judge Dredd Collection', that for Christmas I went and purchased the two hardcover books, 'The Daily Dredds', that collect the dailies that appeared in the UK paper The Star from 1981 to 1989. I was able to get these in Very Good condition for a little over $45 total. 

It's unclear if Rebellion (the current owner of the 2000 AD franchise) are going to issue the strips published in the Star after 1989. But as for these, they are thick bricks of books, and promise enjoyable reading well into the New Year 2023 ! 

Merry Christmas All the Salsoul Orchestra

Merry Christmas All
by the Salsoul Orchestra

Christmas time is here

It's a jolly good time of the year

People somehow know

The Christmas spirit they show

The Salsoul Orchestra recorded a number of albums from 1974 to 1982. Comprised of session musicians, some of whom had previously worked for the Gamble and Huff studio in Philadelphia, the Orchestra released a Christmas album in 1976. Christmas Jollies is an excellent melding of the mid-70s disco sound with Christmas favorites. 

One track, 'Merry Christmas All', an original contribution, was written by the Orchestra's founder, Vincent Montana Jr. with his daughter Denise Montana on lead vocals. 

A video, featuring Denise lip-synching to the song, is available here. Dig it ! They don't make 'em like that anymore !

Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead

Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead is Purely Coincidental

by Drew Friedman and Josh Alan Friedman

Fantagraphics Books, 1985

Drew Friedman (b. 1958) and his older brother Josh Alan Friedman (b. 1956) are the sons of Bruce Jay Friedman (1930 - 2020), who during the 1950s was a prominent house writer for Martin Goodman's Magazine Management publishing company, before embarking on a successful career as a novelist and playwright.

The Friedman boys grew up submerged in the sensibility of the darker side of urban, New York City, Jewish humor. Drew Friedman attended New York's School of Visual Arts from 1978 to 1981, where Harvey Kurtzman was one of his instructors. Kurtzman provides a brief Forward to 'Any Similarity':

Drew Friedman was one of my more memorable students. It was like if Hitler was one of my more memorable students. You get the idea.

In 1978 the brothers began publishing cartoons and illustrations, some of these in Screw magazine. These cartoons were written by Josh Alan Friedman and featured the meticulous stippling of Drew Friedman. The brother focused their attention on the imagined antics of a generation of prewar and postwar actors and showbiz personalities who, as of the 1970s, either were dead, or elderly, and slipping from the public consciousness.

After starting with Screw, during the early 1980s the Friedmans moved into supplying work for mainstream magazines like Heavy Metal (which is where I first became aware of their stuff) and High Times, eventually branching into Raw and the National Lampoon, among other venues. 

'Any Similarity to Persons' (84 pp.) collects black and white and graytone pieces from the Friedman brothers over the interval from 1978 to 1985. It's a large, 9 x 12" trade paperback that displays the artwork to good effect.

In interviews, Drew Friedman indicates that he was trying to reproduce the look of black-and-white photographs with his artwork and this is what makes his imagery so distinctive. He and Josh Alan Friedman depict the characters rendered in these comics with a mixture of affection, pathos, cruelty, and sardonic humor. 

The last page of 'Any Similarity to Persons' provides a Glossary of some of the people and caricatures presented in the pages of the book; this helps give context to personalities that were obscure even at the time the Friedmans included them in their cartoons. 

I did find myself Googling more than a few of the featured subjects. For example, I had no idea that comedian Lou Costello's year-old son, Lou Costello, Jr., had drowned in the family pool in November, 1943, after slipping out from the bars of his playpen. 

An argument could be made that if 'Any Similarity to Persons' is to retain any resonance among modern-day readers, a reprint will have feature annotations of a more comprehensive nature. This is because the personalities satirized in its pages have slipped so far into obscurity that readers under the age of 60 likely will find much of the book's content inscrutable.

Those with the memories and a fondness for the pop culture icons of the era depicted in 'Any Similarity to Persons' will find the book engrossing. Even those lacking in familiarity with the era still may enjoy the book for its meticulous artwork and potent atmosphere of mordant comedy. 

I would be remiss if not pointing out that Drew Friedman has released other collections of his artwork, and his 2007 trade paperback, 'The Fun Never Stops', which focuses on pop culture of the 80s and 90s, likely will find greater rapport with with a younger generation of readers.

Book Review: The War Hound and the World's Pain

Book Review: 'The War Hound and the World's Pain' by Michael Moorcock

 2 / 5 Stars

'The War Hound and the World's Pain' first was published in 1981 in the U.S. as a Timescape book (239 pp.) from Pocket Books, with cover art by Rowena Morrill. 

In August, 1983, the New English Library published a larger-size paperback version (198 pp.) for the U.K. market, with cover art by Chris Achilleos.

'War Hound' is the first volume in the so-called von Bek series, which concludes with 'The City in the Autumn Stars' (1986).

'War Hound' is set in Europe in the year 1631, in the midst of the Thirty Year's War. The protagonist, Captain Ulrich von Bek, is a soldier of fortune, serving various polities and religions depending who offers the most reliable pay. von Bek has no illusions about the sanctity of these religious wars, preferring to observe the mayhem with an attitude of calculated indifference. 

After participating in the notorious siege of the German city Magdeburg, von Bek finds his studied callousness disturbed by the atrocities visited upon the city's hapless people. He  decides to remove himself from the sphere of the War, and wanders into the deeper forests of Germany. There he comes across an unusually tranquil setting, a setting dominated by a resplendent castle.......with no living beings inside it. 

In due course an alluring woman named Sabrina arrives, attended by undead servants, and it becomes clear to von Bek that the castle and its environs are steeped in the supernatural. von Bek learns from Sabrina that the lord of the castle is none other than Lucifer himself. And Lucifer has a task for him..........a task that von Bek cannot refuse, on pain on being condemned forever to Hell.

Hoping to save his soul from Hell, and win the lady Sabrina, von Bek sets off across the known worlds and the world between the worlds. His journey will take him to the haunts of the Wild Hunt, encounters with a fanatical persecutor of heretics, and confrontations with demons and devils. For even though von Bek serves the aims of Lucifer, some of the creatures of Hell have their own reasons for wanting to see his quest fail...........

I found 'War Hound' to be a disappointment. 

Much of narrative (indeed, the first 50+ pages) is devoted to lengthy passages of dialogue in which the characters engage in philosophical discussions. The action sequences that are commonplace in Moorcock's older fantasy novels are effective, but reduced in number, in the pages of 'War Hound'. The only character with any sort of personality is one Philander Groot, who is an incarnation of Jerry Cornelius. 

It's not disclosing spoilers to say that Moorcock's aim with 'War Hound' is to compose a fantasy novel with a Message, the Message being that humanism is the only viable alternative to the dashed hopes that are integral to any religious belief. But the novel's approach to imparting this stance is overly labored, and, in the closing chapters, not very convincing. 

Each reader will of course have to draw his or her own conclusions as to whether they agree with Moorcock, but for me, the justification for replacing religion with humanism, as expounded in 'The War Hound and the World's Pain', seemed glib and facile. I finished the book content with providing a two-star Rating, and with no overwhelming desire to pursue the sequel. 

Defeat Comics: National Lampoon August 1971

Defeat Comics

from National Lampoon, August 1971

The My Lai Massacre, which took place on March 16, 1968, and resulted in the deaths of some 504 South Vietnamese civilians, was very much in the news in 1971, when in March of that year a court-martial found Second Lieutenant William Laws Calley Jr. guilty of murder and sentenced him to life in prison.

Calley subsequently was freed in 1974, but the counterculture - of which National Lampoon was a part - used the My Lai massacre to heighten its condemnation of the Vietnam War.

The August, 1971 issue of the Lampoon went all-out with mordant, militant humor over the Vietnam War, with Frank Kelly Freas commissioned to provide a cover portrait of William Calley, as merged with 'Alfred E. Neumann' from Mad magazine.

Inside, writer Michael O'Donoghue provided 'Defeat Comics', a vicious satire of the war comics from Marvel, DC, and Charlton then circulating on newsstands. O'Donoghue teamed up with George Trow and artist 'Crag W. Granite', a pseudonym for the established comics artist Frank Springer. Heightening the comic's subversive sensibility was the fact that Springer did artwork for Marvel comics, including Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

With its depictions of all-American boys morphed into G.I.s who are war profiteers, junkies, stoners, and antiwar activists, 'Defeat Comics' encapsulated the counterculture's attitude towards the war.......... and was laugh-out-loud funny in the bargain. 

Although the faux advertisement for 'Lt. Calley's Kill the Children Foundation', and 'Madame Ky's Puzzle Page', are ghoulishly over-the-top.......